


Mirrors and Bare Feet

by wtgw



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: ALL the issues, Angst, Betrayal of Trust, Canon Backstory, F/M, Flirting, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Morrigan is a bitch, One Shot, Reference to Child Abuse, Scars, Self-Worth Issues, Unhappy Ending, Vanity, Vulnerability issues, Zevran is even worse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-05
Updated: 2012-11-05
Packaged: 2017-11-18 01:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtgw/pseuds/wtgw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morrigan never went barefooted after the incident with the mirror.  Never bare-hearted, either.  And even this tentative friendship, this light camaraderie... it had to end viciously, of course.  Everything in her life ended viciously.</p><p>Based on Zevran and Morrigan's party banter in DA:O</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirrors and Bare Feet

**Author's Note:**

> I always found this particular bit of party banter to be notably cruel. I strongly disliked Morrigan during my first playthough. I had very little sympathy for her. But the moment I heard this in the party banter... Maker, it was just so cruel. It was the worst, most petty bit of high-school-level manipulation, and it just enraged me. I was just so *angry* and *hurt* and *horrified.* ...Well I had to write something about it.
> 
> Hope it works. ^_^;

She knew it was only fair.  After all she’d done to them.  She’d been unbearably rude and downright cruel to a point, and she knew it, despite her insistence that a woman grown up in the Wilds hasn’t the first idea of politesse.  She may not be well schooled in etiquette, but she was not a fool.  She’d chided Alistair for grieving at the loss of his entire company - the only family he had left.  She’d mocked Wynne about her religious shackles and impending death when the woman had been nothing but graceful and kind about it.  She had treated even the delusional Chantry girl with a disdain usually reserved for her most despised enemies.  ‘Twas not the girl’s fault she suffered delusions, nor Wynne’s that she was living on borrowed time.

Of course it would happen that they would take their revenge.  It was a small one too - nothing as grandiose as she would have expected.  Nothing as harsh as she deserved.

And yet it was more painful, more humiliating than she could have imagined.

“By the Maker, you were right!  You win, Zev.”  Alistair’s comment was just a bit bewildering for a moment - she’d thought the boy well out of ear shot.  But then the dust settled, her face fell, and Morrigan wore her visage of perpetual loathing once more...

“I think you owe me five silvers, yes?”

The elf.  The _fucking_ elf.  Of course.  

It was so obvious, so simple - how could she have fallen for such a ridiculous ploy?  A bet made for five silvers, at that!  A bloody pittance considering the coin they’d made as of late.  She knew they hated her - she knew she deserved it, in point of fact, but was her pride, her shame, the mark of her sin worth only that?  Her vanity, her desire, her need for... something she’d never quite had... and the revelation of those? 

Her pride was only worth five silvers?

\--- 

Morrigan thought of the gilded mirror she’d stolen as a child; of the lesson she’d learned that day.  One she’d clearly forgotten, due to Zevran’s particular brand of flattery.

“You see this, child?” Flemeth had asked, holding the mirror up to Morrigan’s face.

The girl-witch nodded timidly.

“This is poison.  It is vanity and foolishness and – worst of all – weakness.  It is your _death_ , child.  Death at the hand of a charming farm hand who will suck you dry of life and leave you broken.  Useless.  _Valueless_.  It is death at the hand of the nobility who will show you your weakness in these very trinkets you look at all day.  It is death at the hand of the templars who will hold your leash and choke you to _death_ with it” – Flemeth smashed the mirror upon the ground – “should you let them for a moment see your weakness, you _foolish_ girl.”

Morrigan was never accustomed to Flemeth speaking with kindness, but never before had she seen the woman so serious, so crazed... she jumped back with a pitiful yelp, trying desperately to avoid her mother’s wrath.  The shards of glass lay strewn about the floor, haphazardly sticking out between warped floorboards and edging into cracked lengths of wood.  Morrigan’s legs tensed, her bare feet only inches away from a large chip of glass.  She would have turned into a mouse – the only form she’d truly been able to perfect at her young age – but for knowing how Flemeth would react, and the further punishment she’d receive.  Right now she’d be lucky to get off with a scolding.

She was not so fortunate that night.

“Beauty is a thing of evil,” said Flemeth in her too-knowing voice.  A voice with yellow eyes and sharp fingers that you could _hear._

That had been Morrigan’s first real lesson; at the ripe old age of six, she learned too well what strength was, what power was, and what happened when you had neither.

\--- 

Even now, small areas along her legs and feet were even now scarred by fire too quickly replaced with ice.  With shards of glass implanted and removed one by one into the soles, the arches – one in between her toes, even.  The bottoms of her feet were a horrible sight – she never went barefooted anymore.  Not even when asleep in her tent.

Morrigan often dreamed about the mirror and the fine lady in her fine carriage.  Dreams that quickly turned to nightmares of men pawing at her when she got too close to them.  Of Templars grabbing her and dragging her away from her house.  Of her mother flaying those very Templars alive.  Of hearing their screams, until she was sure she’d rather be taken by them than be forced to watch this...

Beauty was a thing of evil, she had learned.  _Attraction_ she could use to her advantage, yes.  Often, in fact.  Sex was simply something to get herself out of situations in which magic would only cause trouble.  To charm a shopkeep into letting her have that last salve for a few pennies less.  To bewitch a man into giving her genuinely anything she desired.  But _beauty_?

Alistair called her ugly.  He mocked her features and compared them to her mother’s - oh her mother, whom she tried so desperately to emulate, and also to forget.  Leliana joked about her clothing, teasing her with dreams in which she was treated like a doll and could let herself be frivolous.  Pretty.  _Powerless._ The Warden was too besotted with the Orlesian to glance her way for even a moment, and he only ridiculed her practicality whenever they spoke.  She almost hated him more than the witless Templar.

And then the elf.

The elf, who’d teased and poked and prodded, but been little else but decent to her.  Who had not judged.  Who saw her practicality and admired it, seeing it not as a flaw but as a virtue – a means of survival.  She saw in him somewhat of a kindred spirit, though he was infuriating at times with his constant concupiscence.  They often took their turns at watch together, rather than be lectured at by Wynne or talked to death by the bard.  Zevran would tell her about his childhood in Antiva - stories of the whorehouse or of the early days of his Crow training, and Morrigan would let her guard slip ever so slightly to tell him of her training with Flemeth.  If either of them felt sorrow at these tales, neither of them showed it.

Strangely enough, it seemed, Morrigan had found a friend.

And then one day, it changed.

It started with a simple compliment – that she looked nice when she smiled.  Part of her appreciated the gesture, but the rest of her, the part so strictly trained by The Witch of the Wilds, immediately shut down.  But she quickly relaxed once more – it was _Zevran_.  Flirting was, to him, akin to breathing.  He meant nothing by it.  She was no more beautiful than any other with an ample bosom, which she took great comfort in.

But he persisted.

He complimented her legs, her hands, her neck, her voice.  He spoke of her lips as though they were the height of beauty.  It was quite unnerving.  But it was _Zevran_.  He meant nothing by it.  Still, it was... odd...

Then, as they walked through the gates of Orzammar, he spoke of her eyes.  “Marvelous” he called them.  Morrigan was beginning to tire of this game, and wanted nothing more than to know what he wanted out of this foolishness.

But he spoke with such sincerity...  “Beautiful,” he called her.  “Exotic,” he called her.  All words spoken by this voice she had come to... trust?  He was her friend, if such a thing existed at all.  Was it possible that he saw beauty in her?  Beauty... without weakness?  Without blame or restriction?

Morrigan fell out of step for but a moment as she considered the gilded mirror.  The admiration she’d felt for the lady in the carriage.  How much power, control, that lady had exuded.  And how painful it had been to have these illusions stripped away with glass and fire.  Was it possible that Flemeth had been wrong?  That beauty was not a weakness?

Was it possible that she could be beautiful?  And that it was... alright?

Morrigan’s eyes faltered, softening for only a moment as her mouth twitched.  She readied herself to do something never done before: to thank Zevran for his compliment.  Because he thought she was beautiful.  And thought no less of her for it.

“Well, I suppose I...”

“By the Maker!  You were right!  You win.”

“I think you owe me five silvers, yes?”  Zevran’s eyes sparkled with mirth.  He’d sold her dignity, her strength for an entire five silvers, and he was _laughing_.

“I hate you all,” she said, gritting her teeth, her careful voice showing no great difference from her usual disparaging tone.  The others laughed.  Of _course_ they did.  
  
 _Bastards_.  
  
No.  She did not care.  She did _not_ care.

When Morrigan saw a gold-set mirror in Legnar’s shop, she bought it without a second thought.  It was only in her possession for 10 seconds before she leaned over the chest-high wall and cast it into the lava below them, wishing she could do even more damage - could smash it into tiny pieces and cast the shards into their faces, with fire and ice and all the things her mother had once used on her - without making it obvious how much she _hurt_. No, she could not do that, because that would mean that the elf (the stupid, bastard, whoreson, _fucking elf_ ) had won. And though she would not, could not, forgive him, she could not help but see the spark of regret in Zevran’s eyes as she walked towards the Diamond Quarter.  Regret — _hah_!  Irrelevant.  Meaningless.  Useless.  She would not make the mistake of trusting him again.

From then on, Morrigan spent her time on watch with Sten.  He did not speak, and neither did she.

It was simpler that way.


End file.
